LONG BLOG

Last week was kind of slow for me, and this one isnít much different. The most notable thing right now is that I started school again, after a good three months vacation. To be honest, it was high time I started working again. After all, thereís only so many anime you can watch and so many video games you can play before that nasty feeling starts creeping up that you should be doing something productive instead. Oh, how I long for those days back in high school when I hadnít yet realized that terrible fact.

This week was more an introduction than anything, so I could still take it easy and do the things I enjoy. That is, if my Internet access hadnít crapped out on me. I manage my own Internet at my student home, and for some reason it is completely refusing to work. Hence why my caps are pretty late, had to do them back at my parentsí place. My service provider insists that itís a problem on their end and should be fixed in the coming days, but I donít buy that for a second. Nobody else seems to have the problem but me, and for a problem at my providerís it has the most irregular times of working and not working. Personally, I think that after 4 years of unearthly heavy duty my modem and/or router is simply busted. Iím probably going to get a new one next week, and then itís high time to start praying for it to work. I need my Internet fix, dammit! They canít leave me hanging like this!

Anyways, after my introductory week of my second year for my Masterís Degree in Law I can safely say that this is, once again, going to take a lot of work. I have already been informed of an essay that should be in the range of 25 Ė 30 pages, and this is only one of many Iíll be writing from now to December. The good news is that I may be able to get an exemption from another class, which would save me a good two hours every week. Itís a course for Academic English Writing, but that seems kind of pointless seeing as Iíve had years of experience doing exactly that, and on top of that already followed a similar course two years ago. With all the other things I will be required to do, those two hours a week would come in mighty handy, so fingers crossed.

Whatever happens, of course I have no intention of dropping my duties as a faithful Recapper for all you rapscallions (although it goes without saying that Iím not going to have a new video game to discuss every week or something), so it would seem that Iím going to have busy days ahead. And hey, if nothing else itíll make those rare moments of carefree gaming all the more worthwhile.

In other news, today was one of my best friends' birthday. I gifted her Thomas Was Alone, because off course I did. I'm visiting her later today, can't wait to hear what she thought of it.

This month's bloggers wanted prompt is something we stole. You see, by stealing this idea, you have no idea how truly inept I actually am. By pretending to know what I'm doing, I have clearly used my ill-gotten status to meet such big-time celebrities as Darlington Woolie "Pie Stealer" Madden or Sara from [insert pixel indie game studio here].

This month's bloggers wanted was inspired by the internal enjoyment we had at reading TheBlondeBass' promoted blog on faking conversational anime knowledge. And now it seems as good a time as ever to pretend to know what's going on since the new Fate/Grand Order game launched and qtoid is talking about it. I am a big fan of the character design of Artoria in the blue dress, or Artoria in the suit, or Artoria in the red dress. But seriously, we enjoyed the format so much that we want to ask the community for their own ideas at faking it at all sorts of things.

But this prompt is not just for anime, of course. The video game industry is fractured with all sorts of niche interests that only an insane rich person with no job could realistically know everything about. This month's bloggers wanted is about taking a subject you want to offer advice on faking knowledge about in order to help the greater community, for better or for worse. If this doesn't sound serious, don't worry, you're not supposed to take it seriously. You don't have to be an expert in whatever you talk about any more than Bass is an expert in anime.

I seriously don't know if that was a compliment or an insult.

Offer advice on anything you can expand your mind on. Want to help people get into character action games? The more Ss you put into its grading system, the cooler it is! Want to convince people to get into the Neptunia series? Just say "Nep-Nep!" and you're all set to convince people of your technical knowledge! Can you get someone into RTS game by just talking about your APM? Someone's bound to believe some random technical jargon you made up!

To get started, start a blog and title it "Faking it: [your blog title here]." Then you can be as serious or facetious as you want as you provide advice on any number of things: learning how to play fighting games, trying a long-running franchise you've probably neglected, or even explaining a game's timeline. Heck, you can probably seriously try on that last one and we still wouldn't believe you.

Good luck this month. Only true cowards rely on facts. Real heroes pretend to know what they're doing!

More or less a week ago, the Master Gaming List turned one year old. I had a speech prepared, but the blog editor ate it four or five times over the last few days, so I'm kind of winging it now.

Despite all of the threatening and cajoling I initially made to get you all on the list, I never imagined I'd still be adding names a year later (and by "you all", I mostly mean GajKnight). It was kind of a ridiculous undertaking at first, trying to make a semi-permanent, easily-updatable list of everyone's contact info. I'm not even sure what everyone was being hyped over last year that got me to do this.

That said, I'm glad it came together, and this list has lead to many other things for me on Destructoid; whether it was me becoming our laziest, cuddliest Community Manager, or our laziest, cuddliest Reviews-type-person, I have always enjoyed the full love and support of this community.

In thanks, and with the assistance of quite a few others, I've gathered up a number of game keys to give away to you all.

The Contest

I've never run a contest before, so let's keep things simple. Write me a haiku about your favorite game.

Rules

1. The haiku must not include the title of the game.

2. I will accept any other form of structured poetry if you are unable to haiku but can iambic pantameter (you monster).

3. Please state what key you are going for, and a backup if that one is taken (admittedly, it's quantity over variety here)

4. The tentative end date of the contest will be August 13th, and will be bumped at least once during that time.

Thank you to all 282 of you who have made the Master List a successful project over the past year! I will continue updating it into the forseeable future.

Community AnnouncementsWe have a Twitter account! @CblogRecapsHelp us spread the word out on these recaps and in turn, everyone's blogs too! (These tweets appear on Dtoid's official accounts as well)
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